Publication Date:
2011-03-04
Description:
Palaeontologists characterize mass extinctions as times when the Earth loses more than three-quarters of its species in a geologically short interval, as has happened only five times in the past 540 million years or so. Biologists now suggest that a sixth mass extinction may be under way, given the known species losses over the past few centuries and millennia. Here we review how differences between fossil and modern data and the addition of recently available palaeontological information influence our understanding of the current extinction crisis. Our results confirm that current extinction rates are higher than would be expected from the fossil record, highlighting the need for effective conservation measures.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Barnosky, Anthony D -- Matzke, Nicholas -- Tomiya, Susumu -- Wogan, Guinevere O U -- Swartz, Brian -- Quental, Tiago B -- Marshall, Charles -- McGuire, Jenny L -- Lindsey, Emily L -- Maguire, Kaitlin C -- Mersey, Ben -- Ferrer, Elizabeth A -- R01 GM069801/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- England -- Nature. 2011 Mar 3;471(7336):51-7. doi: 10.1038/nature09678.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. barnosky@berkeley.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21368823" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Biodiversity
;
Conservation of Natural Resources/methods/trends
;
Earth (Planet)
;
Endangered Species/history/*statistics & numerical data/trends
;
*Extinction, Biological
;
Fossils
;
History, 21st Century
;
History, Ancient
;
Human Activities
;
Humans
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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